Teaching History

Teaching history at the K-12 level in the United States is a dynamic and often contentious subject that seeks to foster a deeper understanding of diverse cultures and the evolution of American society. Historically, its significance grew in response to waves of immigration, as educators aimed to cultivate what is known as the "sympathetic imagination"—an appreciation for the contributions of various racial and cultural groups to democracy. Over the years, approaches to teaching history have evolved, influenced by movements like New Education and Progressive Education, which emphasize critical thinking and student engagement rather than rote memorization.

In the 21st century, the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act has necessitated standardized testing and a focus on objective historical knowledge, igniting debates over the appropriate content and methods of history instruction. As American society becomes increasingly multicultural, history educators are called to promote tolerance and understanding of different cultural and religious traditions. The rise of digital technologies has also transformed history education, providing teachers and students with vast resources and new methods for engaging with the past. Ultimately, successful history teaching requires adapting to the unique needs and backgrounds of students while navigating the complex and often politicized landscape of historical narratives.

Published in: 2021

By: Donnelly, Mattny

Subject Terms

Teaching History

This article discusses the teaching of K-12 history in the United States. History was not always a central subject in American public school education, but it took on an increased significance as the United States experienced successive waves of immigration in the 19th century. World and American History were used to show immigrants that the sympathetic imagination - an understanding and appreciation of the contributions made by diverse races and cultures - is central to the outworking of the democratic ideal in American society. This message was reinforced into the 20th century by the rise of New Education and Progressive Education, both of which sought to relate the experience of the individual child to the broader themes of World and American History. As the 21st century began, the National History Standards and the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 emphasized the value of objective historical knowledge and ignited heated debates concerning the relative importance of western culture and values within a multicultural context.

Keywords Educational Psychology; History; Multiculturalism; National History Standards; New Education; No Child Left Behind Act of 2001; Progressive Education; Public Schools; Standardized Tests

Overview

Teaching history at the K-12 level is designed to instill in students what has been called the sympathetic imagination. By developing an increasingly secure grasp of history, students will gain a better understanding of themselves, other people, and the communities and societies in which they live. As the United States becomes an increasingly multicultural and pluralistic society, and in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, history teachers are being called upon to help raise awareness of, and tolerance for, other cultural and religious traditions.

In the United States, the teaching of history in primary and secondary school has never been far from controversy. History instruction has been used at various times and in various places to promote literacy, patriotism, morality, and, most recently, an awareness of past injustices against indigenous peoples and others. Arguments continue to rage about the methods used to teach history, at what grade level history instruction should begin, and whether there are objective facts of history that should be taught to all students. Against the backdrop of these shifting cultural and political sands, new technologies such as the internet are giving history teachers and students' ever-expanding access to information about the histories of different cultures, and a global, networked community of learners is being created in the hope of applying the lessons of history to present geopolitical challenges.

While the writing of history in western culture goes back at least as far as the ancient Greek historians (Aristotle recommended it as an important subject), the institutionalized teaching of history is much more recent. It was largely neglected in classical and medieval times in favor of subjects thought to be more practical, such as religion, grammar, composition, and arithmetic. Only in the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the Reformation in the 16th century, when the individual became the main actor on the human stage, was there a renewed interest in learning, and learning from, the past.

In the United States the teaching of history began as a means to an end, and in some respects it has remained that way. Though American public schools date to 1643, the organized public education movement was established in the 1830s to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic - the three subjects thought to be essential to a good education. When history was taught in the classroom during these early years of public school education, it was primarily in the form of examples to illustrate literary, geographical, or grammatical concepts (Ballard, 1970).

Teaching history began to come into its own in the second half of the nineteenth century. Despite the protests of influential British intellectuals such as Herbert Spencer, who argued in his Essays on Education (1861) that teaching history amuses far more than it instructs, an influential segment of American educators began to see that the teaching of history could be a useful way to assimilate immigrants into the mainstream of American life. Hearkening back to concepts first articulated by the Greeks, they saw history education as central to the health of the nation because it helped to create good citizens who gave their assent to the nation's core democratic principles.

Children of immigrants weren't the only group these educators had in mind - after the maelstrom of the Civil War ended in 1865, teaching history was also seen as a way to remind the children of the North and the South of their common American heritage. In 1876 the National Educational Association (later the National Education Association) - which had been founded in 1857 to unite ten state education associations - recommended that United States History be taught in all public schools, and by 1890 the group was recommending the teaching of age-appropriate history lessons beginning in second grade. While history education in the United States remained far from universal at the end of the nineteenth century, its utility, at least in theory, was beyond doubt (McMurry, 1946).

Missing in this growing enthusiasm for teaching history were methods suited to the task. In the nineteenth century the most common methods of teaching - the Aristotelian idea of repetition, as well rote memorization and reading questions from a textbook - were applied to history teaching, often with dismal results. Researchers who interviewed history students found that most students quickly forgot what they memorized, and, even more troubling, were unable to derive meaning from the facts they had learned.

In the final decades of the 19th century, a movement called New Education took root in America as a reaction against the entrenched methods of teaching history (and other subjects). First developed in Germany by Johann Friedrich Herbart, supporters of New Education argued that students of history and other subjects should be taught to think systematically and to ask questions, rather than memorize lists of facts. Supporters of New Education thought that the classroom syllabus should be organized around themes or units to get at truths common across historical events. For Herbart and the disciples of his New Education philosophy, education's grand purpose was delivering moral and ethical lessons (McMurry, 1946).

American educational theorist John Dewey continued this thread in the early decades of the twentieth century with his emphasis on learning by doing. Dewey and other educators introduced a school of thought called Progressive Education, in which importance was placed on tapping the life experience and cultural background of students in preparing and delivering lessons. They believed in the concept of learning by doing, and they stressed that students should be active, rather than passive, learners. Advocates of Progressive Education tended to emphasize the subjective experience of the student as he or she approached history, rather than the memorization and assimilation of specific historical facts.

Such progressive ideas were sidelined during the Cold War era, when the focus was on the rapid inculcation of science and math concepts as part of 'space-race' competition with the Soviet Union. In the eyes of many educators, American students did not have the luxury of indulging in a journey of self-exploration while the fate of the western world was under threat from the menace of Communism. The argument at the time was that a steady stream of scientists who were well-versed in the objective truths of math and science would provide a bulwark against Soviet aggression and demonstrate the superiority of western capitalist societies. Improvement in these fields was sure to place the U.S. at an undisputed power advantage over the Russians.

But when the Cold War ended in the late 1980s, and politicians and educators took stock of the American educational system, there was a widespread push for reforms that would bolster what many considered lackluster student performance. As with other subjects, the teaching of history came under close scrutiny. Under a 1992 Congressional mandate, the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) formed a committee to draft new guidelines for teaching history in American public schools. Funding came in part from taxpayer dollars through the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education. The standards were intended as guidelines for history teachers as they prepared lessons, but even before they were published in 1996 they drew fire from critics because the UCLA group recommended a rethinking of the traditional method of teaching World History as the story of the rise of the west, and thus not privileging the teaching of western civilization. When the National Center for History in the Schools released their final guidelines to the public in 1996, they were quick to add that their conclusions did not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. government (National Center for History in the Schools, 1996).

Despite these debates over the content of the history that should be taught in public schools as the 21st century began, there was broad consensus over the methods that should be used to teach the content. Public schools had largely endorsed the view of Dewey and others that history teachers will be successful only if they engage students in learning through a blend of traditional methods and newer methods such as alternative assessment and group learning. In the first decade of the twenty-first century these alternative learning methods have been expanded to include use of such tools as digital communications, computers and tablets, and the internet. Also during this period, a number of history educators began to rediscover the New Education movement insight that history is learned best when it progressively incorporates other skills such as writing, reading, and higher-order analytical thinking (Formwalt, 2002).

Applications

Teacher Preparation

From the outset, the teaching of history has presented educators with the challenge of relating the unknown, sometimes murky, past to the known present. As evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker and others have shown, no student comes to the history classroom (or any other classroom), as a blank slate - all human beings are the products of the interplay between genes and culture. A successful history teacher will recognize the inherent strengths and weaknesses of his or her students, their learning styles and their preconceptions about various topics in the curriculum, and adjust lesson plans accordingly. While preparing students to do well on standardized tests is a reality of modern public education, creative history teachers understand that there are many paths to this destination.

John D. Bransford and M. Suzanne Donovan, editors of How Students Learn: History in the Classroom (2005), a report from the National Academies of Science, suggest that history teachers should look at their task through four related, yet distinct lenses:

• Learner-centered lens: What preconceptions about history do students bring to the classroom?

• Knowledge-centered lens: What aspects of history will be taught, and why?

• Assessment-centered lens: How can the teachers discover what students are absorbing from the lessons?

• Community-centered lens: What can the teacher do to make the classroom a place where students ask questions, take risks, and grow in their respect for one another? (Bransford & Donovan, 2005)

These guidelines intersect in several meaningful ways with the work of the United States National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which recommends that all teachers should be able to do five things well: First, they should know their students and adjust accordingly. Second, they should be thoroughly versed in their subject matter. Third, they should adjust their teaching methods to retain student interest. Fourth, teachers should continually evaluate their own performance in the classroom and seek out ways to improve. Fifth, teachers should work with fellow teachers and parents to help their students become successful learners.

Stages of Student Development

There is a large and growing body of literature in the field of educational psychology that seeks to apply the work of developmental psychologists to the interactions between teachers and students. In order to achieve a high level of professional success and satisfaction, experts generally agree that it is imperative for teachers to understand that the moral, intellectual, and emotional development of their students occurs in discrete stages.

Though they differ on important details, psychologists such as Erik Erickson, Jean Piaget, and Lev Vygotsky have stressed that students go through stages of cognitive, emotional, and moral development. As applied to history teaching, these stages should determine the nature of the lessons, how they are presented, and the methods of student evaluation that are used. Piaget suggested, for example, that high school history students should be encouraged to work in small groups and use alternative methods of learning such as dialogues and mock trials because they have reached the third level of cognitive development he called Formal Operational Thinking. Students in elementary school, by contrast, are more literal thinkers who are less likely to think about history in abstract terms (Snowman & Biehler, 2006).

Learning Styles & Multiple Intelligences

The influential work of Howard Gardner and others shows that just as students come to the history classroom with different conceptions about history and its relevance to their own lives and communities, so they also come with different learning styles or ways of learning. The theory of multiple intelligences holds that in any given history classroom, students approach learning in different, but complementary ways.

There are several types of intelligence that history instructors must take into account when preparing and teaching lessons:

• Interpersonal intelligence: Student works well in groups

• Intrapersonal intelligence: Student is self-directed, focused on achieving the goal

• Linguistic intelligence: Student learns primarily through words

• Mathematical and logical intelligence: Student detects patterns; uses logic to solve problems

• Visual and spatial intelligence: Student learns through observation and visualization

• Kinesthetic intelligence: Student learns best by doing

• Musical intelligence: Student is adept at detecting tones, rhythms, and music

• Naturalist intelligence: Student is at home in nature

Skilled teachers will seek to recognize students with these intelligences, thereby making the subject matter more appealing to all students (Formwalt, 2002; Snowman & Biehler, 2006).

The Role of the Internet in History Teaching

The rise of the Internet in the mid-1990s brought with it the potential for a significant impact on classroom instruction. By 2013, rather than relying almost exclusively on textbooks, students and their teachers are exposed to a broad range of content—this includes computers and tablets, the Internet and social media, and expanded digital communications, in addition to audio and video aids. As applied to history, teachers are now able to draw upon a vast collection of primary source material in preparing lessons, and they are also able to communicate—via email, instant messaging, blogs and websites, social media, or videoconferencing—with other history teachers around the world to discuss best practices or even gain encouragement in challenging classroom situations.

Beyond lesson plans and collegial benefits for teachers, the Internet also brings with it the potential to engage those students who do not learn best from reading or oral instruction. Through streaming audio, video, and other content available online, history teachers can enrich both the learning experience of students with a broad, preexisting interest in history and the learning experience of those students who have struggled with the topic. A number of education experts suggest that the use of multimedia in the classroom is also a better way to engage students. Others believe that new media such as video games can teach educators some valuable pedagogical lessons (National Institute on Media and the Family, 2005).

Viewpoints

National Standards & Standardized Testing

History instruction in U.S. public schools is conducted against the backdrop of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). The law is designed to raise educational standards in all American public schools, and history is one of the core subjects identified by the law. Key provisions of NCLB include standardized testing, school choice, and more stringent teacher certification standards. NCLB had a considerable impact on history teachers - and by extension history instruction - because it requires that new teachers receive state certification and have the appropriate undergraduate major. Critics of NCLB, however, protest that stringent testing standards require teachers to spend more time on drills and less on alternative learning methods favored by a century of research. They also argue that shifting many of the NCLB implementation costs to the individual states that are already struggling to balance their budgets amounts to an unfunded - and unrealistic - federal government mandate.

Choosing Which History to Teach

The subject matter taught in history classes has often been highly politicized, especially in recent decades as national history standards have been discussed (Symcox, 2002; Cercadillo, 2006). As the United States has become ever more ethnically, culturally, and even religiously diverse, the interpretation of history will perhaps inevitably stir passions or even cause divisions. Some tend to view the teaching of history as documenting the ebb and flow of the implementation of the objectively true values of Western civilization, which they hold up as crucial to an understanding of the past and as a guidepost to help present and future generations of Americans navigate the relativistic waters of multiculturalism and pluralism. Others tend to see much of previous history instruction as whitewashing the sins of Europeans, both in North America and abroad, and they seek to set the record straight through revised curricula that highlights the contributions of non-Western cultures to the American story. There is little debate, however, that poor student test scores show there is much room for improvement in American history teaching.

Terms & Concepts

Educational Psychology: An influential field of study that seeks to apply the findings of developmental psychology to the classroom setting.

Multiculturalism: The idea that the beliefs and values of no one racial, cultural, religious, and ethnic group should be privileged under the law or in the classroom.

National History Standards: A digest of educational goals for K-12 history instruction developed under the auspices of the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles.

New Education: A popular movement, begun in Germany in the 19th century and exported to the United States, that sought to make education more student-centered through an emphasis of alternative methods of learning.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001: Legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush that aimed to improve public education in the United States. It was aimed especially at poor and minority children.

Progressive Education: A continuation and elaboration of New Education ideas that took the life experiences of children as a starting point for education.

Standardized Tests: Regular subject exams given to elementary and secondary school students at various stages in their pre-college career. They are designed to track student progress and identify gaps in student knowledge.

Bibliography

Ballard, M. (1970), Ed. New movements in the study and teaching of history. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Bransford, J.D., and M.S. Donovan, eds. (2004). How students learn: History in the classroom. [Electronic version]. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press. Retrieved March 6, 2007 from National Academies Press. http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11100

Cercadillo, L. (December 2006). 'Maybe they haven't decided yet what is right:' English and Spanish perspectives on teaching historical significance. Teaching History 125. Retrieved March 9, 2007 from ESBCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/Login.aspx?lp=login.asp&ref=&authtype=ip,uid

Formwalt, L.W. (October, 2002). Seven rules for effective history teaching or bringing life to the history class. OAH Magazine of History. Retrieved March 9, 2007 from Organization of American Historians. http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/ww1/formwalt.html

Martell, C. C. (2013). Learning to teach history as interpretation: A longitudinal study of beginning teachers. Journal Of Social Studies Research, 37, 17–31. Retrieved December 10, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=89040630

McClymer, J. (2006). The AHA guide to teaching and learning with new media. Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association. Retrieved March 9, 2007 from American Historical Association. http://www.historians.org/pubs/Free/mcclymer/index.cfm

McCrum, E. (2013). History teachers' thinking about the nature of their subject. Teaching & Teacher Education, 3573–80. Retrieved December 10, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=89436119

McMurry, D. (1946). Herbertian contributions to history instruction in American elementary schools. New York: Bureau of Publications, Teacher's College, Columbia University.

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (2002, October). What teachers should know and be able to do. Retrieved March 7, 2007 from National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. http://www.nbpts.org/UserFiles/File/what_teachers.pdf

National Center for History in the Schools (1996). National standards for history basic edition, 1996. National Center for History in the Schools, University of California, Los Angeles. Retrieved March 6, 2007 from National Center for History in the Schools. http://nchs.ucla.edu/standards/

Snowman J. and Biehler, R. (2006). Psychology applied to teaching. 11th ed. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Symcox, L. (2002). Whose history? The struggle for national standards in American classrooms. New York and London: Teacher's College Press.

National Institute on Media and the Family (2005, April 9). Violent video games as exemplary teachers. Retrieved March 22, 2007 from http://www.mediafamily.org/research/Exemplary_Teachers_SRCD.pdf

Weber, W. (2012). The evolution of the history teacher and the reform of history education. History Teacher, 45, 329–357. Retrieved December 10, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database Education Research Complete. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ehh&AN=76119134

Teaching History

On this Page

Subject Terms

Teaching History

Overview

Applications

Teacher Preparation

Stages of Student Development

Learning Styles & Multiple Intelligences

The Role of the Internet in History Teaching

Viewpoints

National Standards & Standardized Testing

Choosing Which History to Teach

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading